So Camp Pendleton Marines and sailors preparing to deploy to Afghanistan during the next few months are receiving training tailored to the mountainsides of that war zone, the mindset of insurgents and the cultural norms of Islamic villages.

Some of the exercises are done right on the base, while others take troops to the Mojave Desert or snowy peaks northeast of Yosemite National Park.

The regimen includes:

• Roadside-bomb training: The Pentagon recently spent $9.2 million to create a Camp Pendleton complex focused on improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which accounted for 75 percent of attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan during 2008 and remains the top cause of deaths and injuries to American troops there.

The facility is one of 57 “home station training lanes” to be built at U.S. military bases. Service members learn how to spot IEDs on roads, search a mock town for hidden explosives and bomb paraphernalia, and operate boxes that jam radio signals used to detonate the bombs.

• Mobile Counter-IED Interactive Trainer: Marines walk through a series of large trailers in which actors shown on video screens give them insight into the thinking of insurgent bomb makers and troops who have faced IEDs on foreign ground.

There’s a quiz at the end of each segment.

• Rough terrain: A new 184-acre, live-fire training range in Camp Pendleton’s most rugged corner is supposed to mimic Afghanistan’s lower mountains and hilly terrain. It’s designed to include mock towns, vehicles that move on tracks and foam statues dressed to look like insurgents, including fake blood for the shock factor.

• Infantry Immersion Trainer: This one-of-a-kind, high-tech simulator uses holographic images, role players, Hollywood-style sets and other means to depict neighborhoods in Afghanistan. Scenes are changed periodically to give troops up-to-date representations of what they’ll see, hear and smell in the war zone.

The apparatus is housed in a 32,000-square-foot building at Camp Pendleton.

• Combat Hunter: Created in response to insurgents wounding and killing Marines with small-arms fire, sometimes through ambush attacks, this program teaches Marines to use their natural senses and other hunting skills to track down and eliminate enemies.

• Convoy trainer: The $20 million video game puts Marines in realistic-looking Humvees and trucks. Screens on all sides project different scenarios for the convoys to navigate.

Recently, the Marine Corps replaced the Iraq war “profile” with a version customized for the Afghanistan conflict. In the current setup, the mocked-up Humvee has to chug up steeper terrain when chasing bad guys on the screen.

The “transmission” conks out if the driver chooses the wrong gear for the hill. Inattentive drivers also can send their crews over the side of a cliff.

• Mountain warfare: Afghanistan is known for its unforgiving mountain ranges and frigid winters. To adjust to the higher climes and cold weather, some Marines are sent to train in the eastern Sierras at the Mountain Warfare Training Center near Bridgeport.

• Mojave Viper: For desert combat, the Twentynine Palms base offers monthlong courses in urban warfare and cultural awareness. This facility, situated in the Mojave, consists of two mock villages with hundreds of actors and about 400 buildings spread over 252 acres.